February 07, 2013

Advertising Is Like Exercise

Here's what the ROI monkeys don't understand about advertising. They think you can advertise today and measure the results tomorrow. It doesn't work that way.

Advertising is like exercise.

If you're not used to running, and you run 5 miles today, you will not be stronger or healthier or feel better tomorrow. Or next week. As a matter of fact, you'll probably feel like crap.

But if you run 5 miles every day, next year you probably will be stronger, and healthier, and feel better.

That's also how advertising works.

If you advertise today, your business is not going to suddenly be successful tomorrow or next week. But if you advertise every day, next year your business probably will get better, and healthier, and stronger.

Why do you think a can of Coca-Cola is worth 50¢ more than
a can of Safeway cola? It's not because of the Coke ad you saw last
night or last week. It's the ones you've seen for your entire life.

Notice I said "probably." There are no guarantees. Just like exercise, sometimes advertising backfires. You can take off on a 5 mile run and have a heart attack after 10 minutes. Or you could run for a year and wind up with a gimpy knee. You never know.

Similarly, you could advertise for a year and end up with nothing but a one-way ticket to unemploymentland.

It's all about likelihoods and probabilities.

If you look at the leading brands in mainstream consumer products and services categories, the likelihood is that they have one thing in common. They advertise, and they do it a lot.

Does this mean that in all consumer products categories advertising is a surefire road to success? No.

A question to which your answer to hear I'm very interested: how do you answer/persuade clients that you can't measure the effects? I mean obviously you could look at sales during a campaign, the might go up, they might increase, they might decrease. You could always tie it to the campaign in some way. So is the honest true answer: there is no real measurement available or do you have indicators that might actually provide some measures that one can rely on?

Wish my company would advertise instead of wasting millions listening to a bunch of 30 year old "social media experts" who have no experience in our industry. Be nice to walk into a prospects office and have them actually have an idea of who we are.But no, they're too busy creating a "dialog with the consumer" via twitter posts.

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Creative people make the ads. Everyone else makes the arrangements."

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business is about sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."